There i go again, p.18
There I Go Again, page 18
Later I had to be a good actor in a much larger scene between Warren and myself, and I thought everything seemed to go without a hitch. But the director, Alan Pakula, kept asking us to do it again and again. After each take Warren would go and sit next to Pakula, and they would have a quiet confab.
“Okay, let’s try it again,” Alan would say. And we did it again. No lines were flubbed, and everything seemed to go smoothly. I stood there after each take waiting to hear the director say, “Print it.”
After about the tenth take I got tired of standing there while Warren and Alan talked, so I went and sat down.
“We were wondering how long it was gonna take you to come and sit down,” one of the grips said.
We did, by my count, twenty-one takes that as far as I could see were all identical.
I had lunch with Pakula after the shooting wrapped, and I asked him what had been going on there during those many quiet discussions.
He said, “We were having an argument.”
“About what?”
“I wanted Warren to become emotional. I wanted him to raise his voice in fear since the character felt his life was endangered, but he wouldn’t do it. He felt his character was in control and was keeping his cool.”
I wonder now if that was a requirement for being a star: never get ruffled, have every hair in place, keep your cool, and smile in the face of danger. This is not meant to be a criticism of Warren; he had plenty of messed-up hair in Bonnie & Clyde. And I don’t remember him smiling a lot in that movie either.
The next time I heard from Warren was a few years later, when he offered me a small but important part in Reds, the film he was directing. I’ve often joked that in films I refuse to do big parts, only small, important parts. (1776 was the exception.)
In Reds Warren wanted me to play a union leader urging several hundred members to stick together in the face of adversity. Come to think of it, I played the same role about twenty years later as president of the Screen Actors Guild.
The Reds shoot required me to travel to Manchester, England. The only request I made was that Bonnie accompany me. We flew to London, and the car that picked us up took us to a dreary-looking hotel. We were to take a train to Manchester, film, and then return by train to spend the night in the same dump. We dropped our bags and took the train, and when I got to the set in Manchester I corralled the line producer in the hallway of the hotel where all the important actors (e.g., Jack Nicholson, Maureen Stapleton) were staying. I started yelling at him about our poor accommodations in London. Unbeknown to me, Warren was coming down the hallway behind me. He never intruded or made his presence known, but he must have heard my rant.
While we were filming in Manchester, our luggage was moved to a two-room suite at the Dorchester Hotel in Mayfair, across from Hyde Park.
When we arrived at the Dorchester, we were informed that dinner reservations had been made for us that evening in a posh restaurant (I can’t remember the name of it, but I do remember that it was across the street from MI5, the British intelligence agency). Dinner had been ordered for us. Bonnie received an orchid, and I was given a cigar. Although Warren wasn’t out of pocket on our upgrades (thanks to his Paramount expense account), he certainly went out of his way for our benefit.
And he won an Oscar for directing Reds.
It must have been prophetic for Warren to cast me as a union leader because when I did become president of the Screen Actors Guild and had theatrical negotiations and problems with agency contracts, I reached out to him. He was always willing to discuss the issues at length. It was important for me to get the support and energy of a major film star like Warren. I’ll always be grateful to him.
In 1976, no doubt due to the country’s bicentennial (though I like to believe the success of the musical and movie 1776 had something to with it), PBS aired a thirteen-episode series called The Adams Chronicles.
I played John Quincy Adams, John Adams’s eldest son. It was a good thing that I was offered John Quincy instead of John Adams père. I’d played John Adams in 1776 for so long that I wasn’t anxious to do so again, especially in a different project, so I was surprised and delighted when offered the role of his son.
As John Adams, I had argued for the abolition of slavery and tried to make that part of the Declaration of Independence. Benjamin Franklin claimed that doing so would mean the southern states wouldn’t sign. Franklin won the day.
John Quincy continued his father’s work on this issue, and in a widely publicized court case in New Haven in 1839 he defended a group of African captives who had been detained after staging a revolt on board the Amistad. (This episode of history was made into a great film by Steven Spielberg in 1997.) The key scene, however, was when John Quincy Adams argues the case in Washington when it reaches the Supreme Court.
Between my initial scenes and that climactic one, I was stricken with appendicitis—though I didn’t know it. Now, most people who were filming in the New York area would likely have gone directly to a New York hospital. Not me. Knowing that something was wrong but not sure what it was, I simply got into a cab without any luggage, headed for the airport, and got on a plane home to California. Bonnie met me in Los Angeles and took me directly to my doctor, who sent me straight to the hospital, where I had my appendix removed.
My delay in seeking medical treatment was yet one more instance in which I did something that might be considered foolish, even ill advised, but in which once again luck was on my side. It reminded me of the times when I went to the wrong theater to audition but ended up getting the part anyway. This time, even though I’d put my life at stake, all turned out well. A week after surgery I was back East, ready to film my big scene in which John Quincy brings United States v. The Amistad before the Supreme Court.
The government gave PBS permission to film in the old Supreme Court building that had been roped off for public exhibition. During the scene I sat at the very desk Adams had used when he presented his case, trying to get the Supreme Court to address the issue of slavery. This case was argued more than twenty years before the issue tore the country apart during the Civil War.
Moving gingerly and without much strength or energy after my recent surgery, I didn’t have to do much to act seventy-four, John Quincy’s age at the time. The producers put a cot in the back of the room so I could lie down and rest between takes. According to Bonnie my “decrepitude” made the performance quite convincing; in real life Adams actually collapsed and died after making his great oration.
Several years later on an ABC show called The Bastard I played Samuel Adams, the hot-headed revolutionary cousin of John Adams. I have now played every important member of the Adams family, except for Abigail.
14
Home Sweet Homes
As with many actors, my ultimate success in film and TV resulted in the end of my career in the theater. It wasn’t a conscious decision; it just worked out that way. I said my fond farewell to Broadway (though I didn’t know it at the time) when I replaced Len Cariou in the leading role of the lawyer Egerman in A Little Night Music, based on a film by Ingmar Bergman, for the last six months of its New York run. I remember flying back to New York to audition for Stephen Sondheim, whom I knew briefly from Gypsy. After I sang he merely remarked, “You have a sweet voice.” I thought that was the kiss of death, but the part was offered to me anyway. It turned out to be quite a challenge since I just had one week to rehearse and that included only a half hour with the full orchestra—at six o’clock on the very night I was to go on. Thank God for the conductor, our musical director Paul Gemignani, who in that half hour gave me a fighting chance with the tough solo opening number. A Little Night Music was a classy, beautifully mounted musical, and I was happy to be with it. The hard part was being away from my family for six months—and being back in New York—again!
Hal Prince was the director, and even though he had produced and directed an almost uncountable string of smash hits on Broadway over four decades, I approached the role with my own choices.
I want to make it clear that I was always professional when it came to working with directors, whether they were legendary or not. I never argued with them in public or showed them any kind of disrespect. I would listen to their notes, and internally I would make a decision whether or not to use them. But I would always nod and acknowledge the notes, as if I were going to do exactly what they said.
Such was the case with Hal Prince, who said that he didn’t want me to copy Len Cariou in the role but then proceeded to give me direction that would have me doing just that. I nodded and thanked him and then did my own thing.
A week after I had started in the role Hal called a meeting of the cast and said that the show was “tighter and darker now and Bergman would be proud.” This was the second time that perhaps I had pleased Bergman, but I guess I’ll never know.
In 1978 a planned return to the stage was aborted. I had been scheduled to appear with the great British actress Rachel Roberts in the wild farce Absurd Person Singular at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles. The day we were supposed to go into rehearsal I heard from a friend that Rachel had withdrawn from the production and that she was being replaced by Eve Arden. I had agreed to do this show only because I wanted to work with Rachel Roberts, so I told the producers I was out. My name had already been printed on the posters and used in all the advance publicity, so they threatened to sue. I hired a powerful attorney who simply wrote a letter and that was the end of that. (In the letter we offered to pay for the posters, but they never took us up on it.)
My last brush with the theater was a production of A. R. Gurney’s Love Letters. The play is very funny and touching, as it tells the story of a man and woman from the time they first meet until the death of the woman—and the story is told completely through the reading of love letters between the two. The play’s “gimmick” (and I don’t mean that in a negative way) was to have different celebrity couples perform the play for short runs. It was a brilliant marketing idea, and it turned into a true crowd-pleaser.
After its successful New York run in 1990 the play was set to open in Los Angeles at the intimate little jewel box known as the Canon Theatre in Beverly Hills. Bonnie and I had just come off our run on St. Elsewhere, and we were asked to be the first couple to perform. When I found out that there would be very little rehearsal, I said—you guessed it—no. Even though the show didn’t have to be memorized (the actors hold scripts), I didn’t think there was enough time to prepare. It’s a lot harder than it looks to do a show like this—to be in character while constantly glancing down at the lines, then up at the audience, and not losing your place or your train of thought.
The show, by the way, was a huge hit, running for a record-breaking 565 performances, and it featured 128 different actors as the loving couple. Ben Gazzara and Gena Rowlands did it several times. So did the odd couple of Timothy Dalton with Whoopi Goldberg. The list goes on and on.
A few years later Bonnie and I finally did the show—in Buffalo for two weeks and in Santa Barbara. This time, there was time for rehearsals.
I’ve been offered chances to appear on Broadway again, but I’ve never been tempted. One offer was for the Broadway play Morning’s at Seven. I turned it down, and the role went to my old friend Buck Henry. And I had a chance to do Victor/Victoria for Blake Edwards, who had directed me in the film Blind Date, in which I had several funny scenes with John Larroquette. Doing Victor/Victoria would have been a chance to star with Julie Andrews, but not even a wonderful opportunity like that could convince me to do another musical eight times per week.
There was a huge bonus to my exit from the theater and especially from New York: I got to spend a lot of time with our boys, especially during the early days when we first moved to Studio City and I wasn’t working very much in TV and film.
I became adept at carpooling and especially at cooking—I love feeding people. I had always dreamed of a “domestic” lifestyle, and that dream had finally come true.
When we lived in New York and I was doing 1776, I had little time with my family; there were shows every day, a matinee on Saturday, and performances on every holiday, including Christmas. Robert didn’t like to go to the theater, but occasionally Michael would come (he was older), and I think that’s where he probably fell in love with singing and performing.
I think Michael thought of me more as John Adams than as his father. I remember once when I was explaining to him that John Adams had a son who also became president, he said, “Who, me?” Michael was very smart from an early age—he was skipped ahead a grade—and he fit in with the older kids because he was mature and very tall. He was always outgoing and quick to make friends—an “all-American” boy. (Later he would graduate from UCLA and get his master’s in music at USC.) Michael continues to perform, singing with opera companies, and he also teaches English as a second language at UCLA.
Robert, from the beginning, was totally different from Michael, which is not unusual for siblings from separate adoptions.
Robert was always much more private, slow to socialize at school or with a group, as is often the case with children who are very bright. Bonnie and I were his primary companions, and I fondly remember the many hours we would spend in the pool together, both in Connecticut and in Studio City. One problem, which we didn’t figure out until years later—not even the doctors in New York picked up on it—was that he had no peripheral vision. (Fortunately, doctors at the Jule Styne Eye Institute at UCLA finally diagnosed it.) He was wildly creative and spent much of his childhood in his room with art and building projects. When he was older, he was accepted at Wesleyan University because of an outstanding essay he wrote comparing the state of his room to an M. C. Escher lithograph, Order and Chaos. (Escher said, “We adore chaos because we love to produce order.”) The premise: what looked like a total disaster in his room was actually a meticulously planned and executed arrangement of forms. The kid was deep.
Robert, like his brother, was not only a gifted artist but also an amazing musician—he could sit down and play the piano beautifully—but unlike Michael he was not a performer. He’s now a front-end web developer, thus utilizing his artistic background. His practically perfect memory makes him an excellent troubleshooter.
After we moved to Studio City I was home most of the time with the boys, and even when we did St. Elsewhere Bonnie and I had working hours that were as normal as those of any parents, and we always had the weekends free. It was heaven.
John Cleese was once asked if Santa Barbara was heaven, and he said, “No, but it’s the same zip code.”
Bonnie and I would occasionally spend a weekend at a motel down at the beach in Santa Barbara while my parents came over to the house to keep an eye on our two boys, who were only eight and ten at the time. (They were very good grandparents, and the boys loved them.)
Later, with the work in television that came along and the money that came with it, we began to think of a second place—an escape—perhaps a beach house in Oxnard or Ventura, but what we saw in those places didn’t suit us. The homes in Ventura Keys were arranged alongside a canal built for small boats. Back porches faced the homes across the canal not more than thirty or forty feet away—I could imagine a neighbor across the way yelling, “Saw your show last night”—with a thumbs-down gesture. No, that wouldn’t do.
“I think you’d be happier in Santa Barbara,” our real estate agent said.
So off we went to Montecito, in Santa Barbara County, where the tree-lined streets reminded us of Connecticut. We looked at properties in the area for almost a year. There was one house just off East Valley Road that we fell in love with, but it was too expensive. We kept looking, but we couldn’t get that house out of our minds. Whatever else we saw didn’t quite compare. Then, suddenly, the price on our first choice went down and we grabbed it.
After months of renovations, it was official. We had a second California home. Thus began a routine that, schedule permitting, meant leaving Studio City on Friday mornings and spending a long weekend in Santa Barbara. We’ve been doing that for more than twenty-five years.
In the 1970s when I was on McCloud, in an episode called “The Day New York Turned Blue,” I did a couple of scenes with a young Bernadette Peters, who of course later became a major Broadway star. The scenes were about mistaken identity and turned out to be very amusing. The scenes must have stuck in McCloud producer Glen Larson’s mind because six years later I got a call from him while I was working on St. Elsewhere. He explained that he was taking a show idea to New York to pitch to the networks, and he had a few lines he needed an actor to record. Would I do him the favor of going over to Universal Studios to do the lines? I said sure and went into a recording room where Glen handed me the pages of dialogue I was to record. I scanned them and looked up.
“This is the voice of a car?” I asked, incredulous.
He nodded.
In the mid-1960s I’d once had an interview meeting with the author/producer of a show called My Mother the Car. That meeting left him so depressed he almost dropped the idea of doing the show (which, in my opinion, would have been a good idea).
I didn’t want to do the same thing to Glen Larson, so I sighed and said, “Okay, let’s do it.”
“You might do it as a robot,” the casting director said.
“No,” I said.
I began, but Glen interrupted.
“Why don’t you do it like a Ma Bell telephone operator?”
“No, just let me finish recording it, okay?”
I wanted to get it over with, so I continued in my own voice, which turned out to be the best way to go. Not that I’d given it much thought. I just wanted to finish it.
